Re: [BK PATCHES] add ata scsi driver

[Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com>]

Linus Torvalds wrote:
> One prime example of this is cdrecord, and the incredible braindamage that
> the name "SCSI" foisted upon it. Why? Because everybody (ie schily)  
> _knows_ that SCSI is addressed by bus/id/lun, and thinks that anything
> else is wrong. So you have total idiocies like the "cdrecord -scanbus"  
> crap for finding your device, and totally useless naming that makes no 
> sense in any sane environment.
> 
> Calling something SCSI when it isn't brings on these kinds of bad things: 
> people make assuptions that aren't sensible or desireable.
> 
> Names have power. There's baggage and assumptions in a name. In the case
> of SCSI, there is a _lot_ of baggage.


Now that argument I can buy.

There's still helper functions to be created before a native block 
driver can directly use struct requests for fully native queueing. 
Brand new device, host registration code.  PM, hotplug, yadda yadda.  It 
winds up being a lot of code still, and it not as simple as you and Jens 
seem to be making the task out to be.  That's why I brought up 
/dev/{disk,floppy,cdrom}...

If all that work is to be done for a brand new, native block driver, we 
should at least intend on using the code as a bus-agnostic command 
transport layer, with packages of helpers like my current "libata" doing 
the command set work (and sometimes, some amount of low-level driver 
work, where commonality exists).

	Jeff